1. Technical Field
The technology disclosed herein relates to a music sound generation apparatus for generating music sound in accordance with a musical performance operation performed on, for example, a keyboard, while also replaying audio.
2. Background Information
A music sound generation system known in the art allows the user to play a musical composition to its musical performance data, which is stored in a recording medium such as a compact disc. FIG. 6 shows an example of such a conventional music sound generation system (see, for example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. H5-166344). The music sound generation system shown in FIG. 6 includes a music sound generation unit 500 and an audio replay unit 600 as separate functional units. The music sound generation unit 500 includes a music sound processing unit 503, which generates a music-sound signal based on data read from a memory 501 storing sound data and/or other data as well as based on data input via a keyboard 502. The audio replay unit 600 includes an audio processing unit 603, which demodulates musical performance data read from a disc 601 in accordance with an operation of a replay button 602, and outputs the resulting data as an audio signal. The music-sound signal and the audio signal are then synchronized as a predetermined operation is performed by the user.
In the conventional music sound generation system described above, the independent processing circuits, or specifically the music sound generation unit 500 and the audio replay unit 600, output the music-sound signal and the audio signal. The conventional system is required to include two processing circuits functioning as the music sound generation unit 500 and the audio replay unit 600. As a result, the conventional system is costly.